There is considerable interest today in an advanced power delivery system that would embed sophisticated networking and information communicating and processing components within the power distribution grid. With such a system, it would be possible to control power usage in heretofore unrealized ways, to implement a power distribution network that:                Is self-healing,        Is secure,        Provides for market based pricing features,        Supports a wide variety of different local and remote power generation systems,        Has advanced data communications features for end customers,        Interacts with consumer power-consumption devices, and        Facilitates real time and other interactions between any elements        
While the uses of such an advanced power delivery system are many, such an advanced power delivery system would create a highly advantageous environment in which to deploy smart appliances that:                Can communicate with one another peer-to-peer,        Can form part of a distributed computing infrastructure,        Can propagate their control interface to another entity, allowing heretofore unrealized remote control and system integration via proxy,        Can communicate over the internet, and        Can participate in sophisticated, real-time control schemes.        
Until now, however, such advanced power delivery systems have not been practical due to the lack of sophisticated architecture that would support the above capabilities and features. The present invention provides such an architecture through the use of a highly flexible Node Element that may be configured to meet the needs of each specific application, spanning the power generation point to the final consumption points.